


What you couldn't see

by bluebells



Series: What you started [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Keep your friends close and your dubious allies closer, M/M, Movie Night, Pining, rating and warnings will change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29608836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: Mauga knows that look in her eyes. What bomb will Sombra drop tonight?I know you’ve been funnelling money to his friend’s clinic through your family.I know you bullied Michaels off the upcoming mission because it’s near Baptiste’s last known location.I know you’ve been taking more pills to sleep at night.“How’s grandma?” Sombra asks instead, leaning her temple on her open palm. The light from the television reflects strangely in her eyes, and for a moment they glimmer with a lavender sheen.
Relationships: Jean-Baptiste Augustin/Mauga, Mauga (Overwatch) & Sombra | Olivia Colomar
Series: What you started [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175333
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	What you couldn't see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cadmium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cadmium/gifts).



> To spite all the Mauga and Baptiste content we didn't get for BlizzCon 2021, [I asked for prompts on Twitter](https://twitter.com/bellsyafterdark/status/1363281331917000705?s=20) and Cadmium provided: _mauga's still in talon but on a lesser mission and is able to separate from his squad. no one is on his back constantly. miraculously... baptiste is in the same general location. hm. wonder how that happened._
> 
> Samoan translations can be found in the chapter endnotes.

Mauga has spared a lot of thought for what he might say or do when he finally finds Baptiste again.

It’s been almost eighteen months since the combat medic left him on that broken dock in Monte Cristi without a backward glance. Sure, Mauga had been the one to open fire and, with everything Talon’s scientists pumped into his veins over the years, he was engineered to endure a lot, but it stung that Baptiste didn’t hang around to see if he survived.

Perhaps the medic trusted he would-- in the same way Mauga trusts Baptiste to stay ahead of his hunters.

It took three months and multiple rounds of assessment to convince Talon Mauga was fit and a reliable asset for field missions (yes, he could be trusted; no, he was not going easy on their targets even if they share personal history).

It takes six months more for Nguyen to soften his glower to something approaching professional (“I’ll not be in the crossfire of whatever’s going on between the two of you”). The analyst still resents Mauga for getting him dragged into the field but, more than that, Nguyen is not someone who trusts easily. He will not say as much but Mauga knows the man will never forgive Baptiste for tearing their unit apart; Mauga is not the only one Baptiste left behind. Mauga is still braced to find himself steered down an alley by false intel into a firing squad for letting it happen. As though Mauga had any persuasion in the things Baptiste said or did.

Almost eighteen months to the anniversary of Monte Cristi, and Mauga can finally shoulder his heavy repeater without thinking of the way Baptiste used to slap the clasps on his chest and confirm the weapon was soundly fastened. He can work with other medics without sneering and comparing them to the man who preceded them. For years, he was accustomed to a medic who confirmed kills as well as he bandaged their blood loss. Now, Mauga’s fellow teammates are less versatile: mobile healing stations or soldiers who forget to heal at all. They’re younger and they’re in Talon for all the wrong reasons.

He complains to Sombra one evening when the specialist appears at his door holding a disc of the Filipino drama they've been watching together and a sumptuous bottle of whiskey that looks too good open. Her own quarters are strictly off-limits. He doesn’t even know if she has a place on base.

“I don’t like whiskey,” he reminds her, reclined on his small couch and holds up his glass anyway.

“It’s expensive,” she says with a cheeky smile curling the corner of her mouth.

Mauga chuffs a laugh, chest shaking with the motion, and lets her pour until she’s satisfied. “Hn, in that case--”

He met the infiltration specialist through Baptiste and he is glad that even after their mutual friend followed his moral compass out the front door, Sombra found reasons to see him.

Mauga suspects she does it to keep tabs on him. He wonders what she reports back to their superiors. He would worry if he thought he could do anything about it or the conclusions they might reach. That’s one reason Baptiste used to grow frustrated with him: Mauga was too reactive, too willing to just nod and take up his gun without questioning the bigger picture, Baptiste would say.

Baptiste was one of the few who could make it sound like an insult to be a good soldier.

Halfway through their episode, Mauga pauses to peel himself off the shared couch and find more pretzels in his cupboard. Sombra tracks him from her sprawl in the corner, one ankle tucked under the opposite knee, a hand beneath her chin as she leans against the couch’s back. In the lull of the show’s drama, soft static from the wall-mounted monitor hums in Mauga’s ears. Feet bare on the cool tile, he enjoys the soft touch of his oldest sleeping pants and the novelty of a quiet night with one of the few remaining people on base he calls a friend.

He would almost say he is feeling content.

“You seem better,” Sombra says, drumming those lavender nails against her temple when Mauga glances up from the counter. A half-smile lifts her lips.

“Better than what?” Mauga asks, returning with a pitcher of water and two glasses. Sombra leans forward to take one when Mauga pours for her, retreating with a fresh handful of pretzels.

Their episode hangs suspended on the wall across from them, mother and daughter-in-law frozen mid-argument, mouths sneering wide and eyes glinting with ire, pale lights of the Makati skyline spilling across their faces. Mauga settles back into his own corner of the couch and refuses to hide his gaze in the bowl of pretzels like he wants to. He won’t be cowered by Sombra. She smiles at whatever she sees in his face, slow and pleased.

“Better than what?” he presses again.

They’ve both polished off a glass of whiskey but Sombra’s eyes are sharp, incising through the cotton buffer of their mutual buzz. Mauga holds her gaze and reminds himself she can’t see into his mind. She can’t know how much he misses the three of them together: before Sombra was promoted and Nguyen took her place.

Mauga knows that look in her eyes. What bomb will Sombra drop tonight?

_I know you’ve been funnelling money to his friend’s clinic through your family._

_I know you bullied Michaels off the upcoming mission because it’s near Baptiste’s last known location._

_I know you’ve been taking more pills to sleep at night._

“How’s grandma?” Sombra asks instead, leaning her temple on her open palm. The light from the television reflects strangely in her eyes, and for a moment they glimmer with a lavender sheen. “Sina still weeding the gardens? Does she walk every Sunday to meet the women’s fellowship across the village? How is her hip?”

Blood cold, Mauga stares at his friend and forgets to breathe. The static pitches to a whine in his ears and his grip on the pretzel bowl in his lap tightens, white-knuckled.

Among any other friends, it would have been an innocuous question but Sombra never moves without intention.

The last time Mauga spoke about his family, he was burying his face in the curve of Baptiste’s neck even as the medic was preparing to leave him (them, all of them). Mauga was raised by his grandmother, Sina. Unlike many agents in Talon, Mauga still has a family to proudly speak of. They are the reason he persists in this role, reliant on his monthly remittance. They are his greatest strength and weakness.

Sombra wears a poker face of placid mischief, at ease in her recline. She has never brought a gun inside Mauga’s quarters. She has far deadlier weapons than that. Unflinching before the red flare of his pupils like so many of Talon’s soldiers when their senses prime at danger, Sombra's pout suggests sympathy. Mauga has no use for that.

So much for friendship.

“She’s healthy,” Mauga says, tone light and deliberately even. “She turns eighty-six this year. Still strong.”

Sombra smiles and pulls the last of her whiskey with a quiet exhale of satisfaction, peering into the glass. Standing, she sets it on the table and drains her water in three long gulps. “Bless that she has many more to come.” Her voice gentles and her gaze softens, head tilting with an assessing glance from his bare ankles to his white streak of hair Talon bestowed from the shock of their tests. “I’ll turn in for the night. See you on the other side, Mauga.”

It’s one of her briefer visits and as soon as the doors close behind her, Mauga lunges for his datapad. The local time in Samoa is early, but his grandmother was always an early riser. He’s grateful the datacommunication lines improved in the years since he moved away and there is now reliable signal in his village connecting them to the outside world. His lifeline.

The call rings seven times before his grandmother picks up the video call.

“Hello. Yes? O ai lena?”

The breath Mauga had been holding expels in a rush of relief.

“Sina, it’s me--” he begins, dragging a hand down his face, feeling foolish.

Dark eyes filmed grey with age peer at him, squinting in delighted surprise. She looks whole and hale, dark hair peppered with silver and white coiled high atop her head in a bun. A large steel teapot steams on the small stove behind her shoulder.

“Son! Is that you?” His grandmother’s face breaks into a huge smile, eyes thinning with the force of it, and he feels a pang of guilt for having left it so long to check on her (yes, he had lied to Sombra). He can’t remember the last time he called. Before Sina can tumble into her usual tide of affection and scolding, he rushes on.

“Grandma, are you all right? Has anyone been round to visit you lately? Are you safe?”

Sina’s face wrinkles with offence. “A’e! When are you coming home, ah? You ask who visits me-- when are _you_ going to visit me, ah? The church is finished and Ioane has already left for Apia--”

Mauga fights the throb of the vein at his temple, fighting back frustration. He doesn’t have three hours for a family update. “Grandma-- _grandma!_ Fa’amalie atu, this is very important: _Has anyone unfamiliar come to the village recently?”_

Maybe he had misinterpreted Sombra’s intention. Maybe she really was simply being a friend to ask after his family, but Mauga knows his employer. Deploying on Talon's payroll and colours has equipped him with intimately uncomfortable knowledge of what they're capable of. And there is worse than him out there.

Sina clicks her tongue behind her teeth, displeased, but the little glance she spares round her kitchen shows she’s at least considering his plea. “Unfamiliar? You need to come so we can familiarise yourself with _manners_ like these good boys who came on their mission--”

Mauga’s ears perk. “Mission? Like… the mormons?”

“-- They came preaching the word, they had tea in the house and we brought the children to have their ears and eyes checked at the malae --”

Mauga’s stomach drops away and he grips the datapad tight. “Wait. Were they missionaries or doctors?”

“They brought doctors _with them!_ Ah, just one doctor actually,” And here, his sweet grandmother giggles with a hand over her mouth, cheeky and conspiratorial, as she has all his life, “Very handsome, very tall, very dark.” She shivers in delight. “We took a picture with the children. He was so charming, son, I told him I’d convert for him!” Her cackle is rich and self-satisfied. “He even looked at my hip and you know, I’ve had no pain! No pain since he treated me-- and his hands--” she trills, teasing. “Here, I have our picture-- he left this gold salve to apply if it hurts again--”

The datapad pings with the notification of a new file received. Sina continues regaling him but the words smear together as Mauga raises a hand slowly, heart hammering with trepidation. He taps the image sent by his grandmother.

In the thatched shade of the great meeting fale, small children with spindly limbs crowd around a small wooden table lined with black bibles and white boxes of medical equipment-- some of the latter even looks familiar to Mauga. In the background, a pair of young white men stand smiling in conversation with some of the parents Mauga can’t recognise from behind, but he recognises the clean, polished poise of Mormon missionaries in an instant.

All of them fade to insignificance behind the figure crouched by a small child seated at the table. 

Mauga always thought Baptiste would look good in white and now he has his proof. He never thought he would see the man in an ‘ie faitaga either. The long, loose garment wrapped around his waist reaches past his knees. Going into the village wearing anything less would have been downright disrespectful.

It looks good on him. Baptiste always looked good. Even here with the clear bead of sweat dripping down his temple, though shielded from the direct sun, he looks focused and collected, face pinched in concentration as he examines the child’s ear.

He looks good standing there among Mauga’s people, wearing their clothes, on his land. Mauga shakes his head, palm covering his mouth in shock. Baptiste went to his _family._

Bapiste had healed his _grandmother._

“-- But they left a week ago and-- son? What’s wrong?”

The couch comes up behind his knees and Mauga drops, bouncing as the cushions catch his weight, mind racing. He never, in a million years, thought the medic would have reason to visit Mauga’s own home country. What is he seeing?

There is no longer any doubt that Sombra planted the suggestion of his grandmother knowing Mauga would follow it right to the source. What the hell is going on?

_What are you up to, Baptiste?_

Another notification pings for his attention on the datapad. It’s a text message from an unknown sender: Sombra’s signature move.

 _Malo le onosa’i_ , it reads.

If his datapad hadn’t been presently filled with the face of his grandmother, he would have crushed it in his hands then and there.

Have patience? He doesn’t think so.

“Sina.” Mauga finds it in himself to hide some of his teeth when he smiles, because his greatest gift has just been brought to him by the other most important person in his world and he is not going to waste a moment. “Lo’u penina. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to call. Please, tell me everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone go call your grandmother and tell her you love her, okay.
> 
>  **A few culturally specific notes:**  
>  \- Sina calls Mauga 'son' as it's a common custom among Samoan families and sometimes between unrelated elders and youth to express kinship/affection. Also, there is no way 'Mauga' is his real or complete name and I don't want to come back to update this when Blizzard eventually reveal it to us. XD  
> \- Mauga calls his grandmother both 'Sina' and 'Grandma' as both are common custom, but newer generations are following the Western trend of "grandma" and "grandpa"  
> \- The Pacific is fucking full of Mormons on mission, Mormons fucken everywhere, and I doubt that changes in the Overwatch future timeline
> 
>  **Translations (Samoan):**  
>  O ai lena? / Who is that?  
> Fa'amalie atu / I'm sorry  
> Fale / House [(a traditional Samoan house structure)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Samoa)  
> Malae / The shared, open grounds or fields of a Samoan village that surround the common meeting fale  
> Apia / The capital of Samoa  
> 'Ie faitaga / A traditional Samoan article of men's formal clothing, similar to a wrap-around skirt, distinctly with pockets  
> Malo le onosa'i / Be patient or well done for being patient, the nuance shifts with context  
> Lo'u penina / My pearl, a term of endearment

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on Twitter about [gen and meta](https://twitter.com/bellsybuilds) or [ships and thirst](https://twitter.com/bellsyafterdark).
> 
>  **Permissions:** You do not need to ask for permission to make translations, podfics, fanfic or fanart for any of my stories-- I do ask that you link back to my original work and let me know because I would LOVE to share what you've created.


End file.
